This choice of essays, provided in honor of the prestigious profession of well-known political philosophy professor Clifford Orwin, offers a large context during which to think about the increase of “humanity” as one of many leader glossy virtues. A relative of—and additionally a substitute for—formerly extra admired other-regarding virtues like justice and generosity, humanity and later compassion turn into the genuine north of the fashionable ethical compass. participants to this quantity give some thought to numerous facets of this advantage, by way of comparability with what got here ahead of and with awareness to its improvement from early to overdue modernity, and as much as the current.

“Human trafficking isn't a subject of the left or correct, blue states or purple states, yet an excellent ethical tragedy we will be able to unite to prevent . . . now not on the market is a must-read to determine how one can sign up for the struggle. ” —Jim Wallis, writer of God's Politics
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In the revised and up to date model of this harrowing but deeply inspirational exposé, award-winning journalist David Batstone provides the main up to date details to be had at the $31 billion human trafficking epidemic. With profiles of twenty-first century abolitionists like Thailand’s Kru Nam and Peru’s Lucy Borja, Batstone tells readers what they could do to forestall the trendy slave exchange. Like Kevin Bales’ Disposable humans and finishing Slavery, or E. Benjamin Skinner’s a criminal offense So great, Batstone’s no longer on the market is an informative and helpful manifesto for common freedom.

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Supplying a distinct perception into how activists and social switch advocates are addressing Africa's many demanding situations from inside, this choice of essays through these engaged in utilizing cell phone applied sciences for social swap offers an research of the socioeconomic, political, and media contexts confronted through activists in Africa this present day.

West Papua is the main violent sector of Indonesia. Indonesian safeguard forces conflict the country’s final energetic separatist insurgency there. nearly all of Indonesia’s political prisoners are Papuans, and aid for independence is widespread.
But army repression and indigenous resistance are just one a part of a posh topography of lack of confidence in Papua: vigilantism, extended family clash, and other kinds of horizontal violence produce extra casualties than the vertical clash that's frequently the particular concentration of foreign bills of up to date Papua. equally, Papua’s coerced incorporation into Indonesia in 1969 isn't really exact; it mirrors a trend of long term annexation present in different distant and highland components of South and Southeast Asia. What distinguishes Papua is the near-total absence of the kingdom in indigenous parts. this is often the final result of a morass of coverage disorder through the years that compounds the lack of confidence that standard Papuans face.
The writer illuminates the various and native assets of lack of confidence that point out too little country in place of an excessive amount of, demanding situations universal perceptions of lack of confidence in Papua, and provides a prescription of coverage tasks. those comprise the reform of a violent and unaccountable safeguard region as part of a broader reconciliation strategy and the pressing desire for a finished indigenous-centered improvement coverage.

Extra resources for In Search of Humanity: Essays in Honor of Clifford Orwin

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In demanding abstention from some action of possible utility, piety presumes protection from such duress as would compel resort to that utility” (88). Orwin thereby assimilates Athenian piety to Spartan piety and believes that “the Athenians blame themselves unfairly, while at the same time apparently exaggerating divine power” (89). Yet this interpretation misses the tragic sensibility that the pious Athenians, whoever they may have been, bring to the situation described by Thucydides, and this is where the concept of moral luck proves to be particularly helpful.

Certainly we would not want to say that Thucydides is not a philosopher simply because he is not a Socratic philosopher. Yet, in order to clarify the distinctive character of Thucydides’ philosophical thought, it will be useful to identify the key contrasts between Thucydidean philosophizing and Socratic philosophizing. Most important, whereas Socrates is consistently presented as a searcher after wisdom, Orwin’s Thucydides is a wise man—a person whose reflections on “politics sub specie aeternitatis” yield a number of teachings (not just questions or dialectical operating principles) that can be communicated to others.

The reason is that he could not look upon any of the people (such as his children/ siblings) or places (such as the familiar landmarks of Thebes) that he had previously used to constitute himself, or his sense of himself. After explaining his alienation from everything that had been his own, Oedipus next says that he is a human stain (1384), tainted by his own previous command that the citizens should drive pollution from their city (1378–83). The point is that it has now become manifest to all that he is not what he thought he was; whatever had given Oedipus pride in himself, a sense of meaning or selfrespect, had been overturned.